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Filter Guidelines for NDMP Backup Operations

Applies to: Dell, Hitachi NAS (BlueArc), Dell EMC Celerra/VNX/VNXE/Unity, Dell EMC Isilon/PowerScale, NetApp and IBM N-Series, and Stratus

Review the following guidelines before defining filters to exclude files and directories from NDMP backups operations. Filters are added at the subclient level.

Guidelines

  • Use filters only if absolutely necessary. Filters can decrease the performance of backup operations.

  • When a backup operation is performed on a subclient, child paths from other subclients are automatically filtered.

    Caution

    For NetApp file servers, data can be lost when a subclient contains a directory and the parent folder of that directory is also in the contents of a different subclient. For example, if a subclient backup contains /vol/myvol and another subclient has a content path /vol/myvol/dir1, then all files and directories named dir1 will be automatically filtered from the subclient that contains /vol/myvol.

  • To filter a specific path, on the filter tab, add the complete path. The path filter must match a backup path on the subclient.

    For example, when a subclient contains /myfs/myserver/, to filter a subfolder named tempdata, enter the filter as /myfs/myserver/tempdata.

Vendor-Specific Guidelines

The following vendors have specific guidelines for filtering content out of backup operations.

Vendor

Filter support

Dell

  • You can add a maximum of 32 filters for a subclient. The 32 filter maximum includes any automatically added filters.

  • Full path filters are not supported for Dell FluidFS versions below 1.5.0. For example, the filter /myfs/data/dir is not valid for these versions.

  • Dell FluidFS versions 1.5.0 and above support full path filters for directories or files. If the path is a directory, then all files and folders in that directory are excluded from the backup. You can also add a wildcard character at the beginning or the end of the last element in a full path filter.

  • You can add a maximum of 32 path filters for supported versions, in addition to the maximum 32 file or directory name filters.

Dell EMC VNX / Celerra/VNX/VNXe/Unity

  • Full path filters are supported.

  • By default, you can specify a maximum of 5 directory filters and 5 file filters. The number of filters can be increased to 50 for each filter type by using the PAX.filter.numDirFilter or PAX.filter.numFileFilter parameters. Please consult the vendor documentation for information on configuring these parameters.

  • Filters are supported for DART OS 5.5 or higher.

  • Filters are not supported for volume-based backups (VBB). For information about volume-based backups (VBBs), see Volume Based Backup.

Dell EMC Isilon/PowerScale

  • Filters are supported only for Dell EMC Isilon/PowerScale version 6.5.4 and later.

  • Full path filters are supported.

  • The following wildcards are supported:

    • Multiple character wildcard: *

    • Single character wildcard: ?

    • Character range wildcard: [a-z]

      For example, the filter file[a-z] will match files named filea, fileb, filec, and so on.

    • Choice range wildcard: [abc]

      For example, the filter file[123] will match files named file1, file2, and file3.

  • Refer to vendor documentation for additional information.

Hitachi NAS (BlueArc)

  • You can add an unlimited number of filters for each subclient.

  • Full path filters are supported.

    The wildcard character is supported at the end of a path filter. For example, /_VOLUME_/myvol/dir1/tmp* filters all files and folders in the path that start with "tmp".

  • File and directory name filters are supported. Do not include the slash / in any name filters.

    The * wildcard is supported at the front or end of a name filter. For example, tem* filters all files and folders with names that start with "tem".

NetApp

  • You can add a maximum of 32 filters for a subclient. The 32 filter maximum includes any automatically added filters.

  • Full path filters are not supported.

    For example, the filter /vol/myvol/dir1 will either filter nothing or might filter all files and directories named dir1.

  • When you specify a file or directory name and there are multiple files (and/or directories) with the same name in different locations, all of them will be excluded from the backup.

    For example, the filter dir1 will exclude all files and directories named dir1 from the backup.

  • The .snapshot directory is automatically filtered for NDMP Agent backups.

  • The asterisk * wildcard character is only supported at the beginning or the end of a filter.

Stratus

Full path filters are not supported. For example, the filter /myfs/data/dir is not valid.

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